ANAHEIM, Calif. —Texas A&M set out to contain Buddy Hield, the player of the year candidate from Oklahoma, and the Aggies were successful, holding Hield to 17 points, well under his postseason average of 31.5 points per game. The Aggies trapped Hield in the corners and limited his touches, but it was like trying to bottle experience. The No. 2-seeded Sooners are far more than a one-man team, as they demonstrated Thursday night in their 77-63 victory against No. 3-seeded Texas A&M in a West Regional round of 16 game at Honda Center.

On Saturday, the Sooners will play No. 1-seeded Oregon, which defeated Duke, 82-68.

Hield and his fellow seniors Ryan Spangler and Isaiah Cousins, along with the junior Jordan Woodward, have started 103 straight games, and they were finishing one another’s plays against Texas A&M, which was led by Tyler Davis (17 points) and Jalen Jones (11 points and 10 rebounds). The Sooners recorded 23 assists, 9 more than the Aggies, with the core four collecting 20.

Nobody had better shots than Woodard, the Sooners’ 6-foot guard. He was the smallest player on the court but he had the biggest game, with 22 points, including 14 in his first 16 minutes.

How hot was Woodard?

Toward the end of the opening half he grabbed a loose rebound as the shot clock was running out and flung the ball in the direction of the hoop from an impossible angle, only to watch it bank in.

“I just wanted to make sure I got it to the rim,” Woodard said. “It was just that type of night, I guess.”

Woodard does not mind being overlooked because of his size. On the eve of the game he said: “If they underestimate me, they’re not too smart. I like to take on a challenge because I take on bigger guys every day in practice.”

The Aggies also were an experienced team, with four senior starters, including point guard Anthony Collins. But for stretches in the first half they played as if they had been thrown together in a pickup game. Collins twice threw the ball away on passes into the paint. They lost track of Hield on defense, including on an inbounds play, allowing him to cut to the basket for an easy layup off a pass from Spangler. The Sooners took advantage of the lapses to score 19 of the last 23 points of the first half to take a 45-26 lead into intermission.

“We ran into a very good team that played extremely well,” Texas A&M Coach Billy Kennedy said. “Every mistake that we made, they made us pay.”

The hole Texas A&M had dug was deep, but they did not regard it as a tomb. Four nights earlier, the Aggies had erased a 12-point deficit in the final 35 seconds of regulation on their way to a double-overtime defeat win over Northern Iowa. After that game, one of the seniors, Alex Caruso, wrote one word on the whiteboard: Believe. The Aggies took their second-round escape as a sign that they were destined for the Final Four in Houston.

Led by Davis, the Aggies scored the first 5 points of the second half. Sooners Coach Lon Kruger called a timeout. Whatever was said helped the Sooners settle down.

“We had a couple of bad offensive possessions,” Spangler said, “and Coach called that timeout and got us back together and made sure we set our defense up and made sure we were taking smart shots.”

In the first two rounds, Spangler had 11 points. He knew he had to contribute more, and against the Aggies he finished with 10. From the start, Hield could not be contained on the boards, which keyed the Sooners’ transition offense.

“We tried to keep him from touching the ball as much as possible,” Caruso said. “The other guys did a good job of playing off them. We might not have given them enough credit.”

With the victory, the Sooners closed a wound that had festered since their third-round loss to Michigan State in last year’s tournament. The 4-point defeat, Kruger said, was a source of motivation during spring, summer and fall workouts.

“Losing at that point where you are close, but you go home instead, I think that had our guys better focused during the off-season to improve, make progress, work at it,” Kruger said.

On that, the Sooners were on the same page. “Got asked a lot of questions about how we felt last year,” Woodard said, “so we just wanted to make sure we had a greater focus this game and make it to our ultimate goal.”

The round of 8 is not the Sooners’ ultimate goal, so the Sooners planned to celebrate their victory back at the hotel by watching game film.

“Because we have a big game coming Saturday,” Hield said. “So we have to be really locked in for that one, too.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: Oklahoma Puts Experience to Use to Cruise Past Texas A&M. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe